Or, as the rest of the world calls it, warm flourless chocolate soufflé cake (using some, but not all, of those adjectives). David Lebovitz wrote a post a short while back about what do do with some of the god-awful Xocopili balls from Valrhona. He ended up using them in some little chocolate cakesthat looked mighty tasty. I decided to make my own, without the disgusting pre-spiced chocolate. I am generally opposed to the combination of chocolate and cinnamon – one too many bad experiences with oversweetened artificially flavored Mexican chocolates perhaps. So for my cakes I used a combination of regular bittersweet 64% and the ends of a couple of Valrhona plantation bars. Following Lebovitz’ recipe, I melted the chocolates with some butter, then whisked in sugar and egg yolks, followed by vanilla, but no spices. Then I made a meringue with the egg whites and a bit more sugar. By hand.

I folded the meringue by thirds into the chocolate mixture and stopped folding as soon as the streaks had disappeared. Just like making mousse, without the whipped cream.

Then I portioned the batter into buttered and sugared ramekins. Halfway through, I remembered that I’m a sucker for the melting center, so I put a couple of squares of Bonnat Hacienda El Rosario Venezuela in the center of each one, like this. The little mousses puffed up beautifully in the oven, like the soufflés they were trying so hard to become.

I gave them a few minutes to cool, then inverted them onto plates and introduced them to some macerated strawberries. They were fast friends.